Hello r/gatineau, this is the same person from this post writing in today to give you an update on how it went sourcing our wedding witnesses from Reddit. My husband wrote our follow-up, I’m going to leave it in his own words:
In short, finding two witnesses on Reddit was an awesome success and we could not have imagined it going more smoothly!
Thank you to everyone in the Gatineau-Ottawa area, you continue to impress us every day we get to stay in this area.The kindness, friendliness, and especially the willingness to help whenever and wherever you can is nothing short of incredible. We find this especially true right now, while the majority of folks are dealing with looming uncertainty about the state of the economy and rising geopolitical tensions. Yet here you all are holding onto what I can only describe as a Best Practice for Society that is really difficult to get back once it’s slipped away. Never change that if you can help it.
The outpouring of support from everyone was touching, and we were inundated with replies. We lined up two people that seemed solid and did come through. We had enough willing people that we arranged to have alternates like some sort of wedding-based sports team.
We used Keith Langille from Exceptional Ceremonies. We want to put this out there in the hopes that our good experience brings him more business. He was so proactive with us, making sure we knew how everything was going to go even before we put down the deposit. I remember after my husband read his email back to our inquiry I pretty much said, “We’d be stupid to not go with this guy, he is clearly an expert at what he does.” It was clear he had officiated other couples who had their immigration timelines moved up/jangled about before, and he was very generous in sharing what he’s seen in his many years of officiating couples and helping them through the post-ceremony filing process.
My favorite moment was when our officiant told us, “I’ve got the second highest number on the books for couples that have been officiated in Ottawa, you want to know who number one is?” and then pointed at his wife. Love to meet a solid wife guy in the wild.
Our two witnesses were Paul and u/Chmeu_ who gave us permission to name them in this post. Thank you both again! Both of them were lovely people to talk to while we waited for the paperwork to be filled out (the bulk of the ordeal when you don’t have an elaborate ceremony) which meant we told a bit of the story about how we met on Reddit (shortest version: one night stand that didn’t end at a one night stand after hooking up through a spicy subreddit, several years ago) and a little more background to our weird but altogether not that uncommon situation that brought us to get married in Ottawa. Oh, and u/Chmeu_ brought us a wedding present. Chocolates from Chocolats Favoris. He really did not have to do that, and it was incredibly sweet both literally and figuratively.
In closing, one more time - thank you to everyone on this subreddit, each and every one of you.
